


Koi No Yokan

by imitateslife



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Phantom - Susan Kay
Genre: Canon Het Relationship, F/M, Het and Slash, Love at First Sight, M/M, Pre-Het, Pre-Slash, Romance, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-25
Updated: 2016-05-25
Packaged: 2018-06-10 13:36:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6958744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imitateslife/pseuds/imitateslife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two times, Nadir Khan has fallen in love and he can pinpoint the exact moments before he did. Nadir/Rookheeya. Nadir/Erik. Kay-based.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Rookheeya

I knew I would love you, the way I knew that snow would fall in the Alborz Mountains each winter and I knew that I would fall in love with you as steadily as the Caspian Sea rose toward high tide. Your brother had invited me over under the guise of a game of chess, but he and I both knew it was so that I might catch a glimpse of you as you moved through your father’s great house. An hour of putting each other in check and of being at a stalemate with you, wherever you were, made me restless and reckless on the chessboard.

“You cannot play so irrationally when you play chess with my sister,” your brother said as he claimed my knight. “She is cleverer than I am and much more ruthless.”

Until that moment, your family had only spoken of your chastity, humility, generosity, compassion and beauty. I had, until that moment, believed that I would be marrying a saint for whom I would never be good enough. I looked up from the board and before I asked your brother to tell me more, I imagined you. I _dreamed_ you. I imagined deceptively delicate hands maneuvering the rooks and castles to a queen’s pointed strategy. I imagined eyes – brown like your brother’s, but brighter by far – looking into mine… looking into _me_ and knowing my next move without asking, knowing just how to render my king powerless. And suddenly I could not speak, for I knew in that moment that I could love a woman with such keen wit and such enormous power, but the capacity to use it for good.

I could love such a woman for she was no saint; she was my equal.

I did not love you yet. I had not met you or seen you, but I knew then that given time, I could not only respect you, but love you. _I could_ _fall in love with you_.

So when I say that I fell in love with you the first day I saw you, perhaps it is true. But I already began to fall at least an hour before you “accidentally” came bursting into the room and our eyes met and we pretended not to look at each other. I believe in fate, _jeegar-am_ , and I believe that Allah meant for you and I to be king and queen, nestled side-by-side on the checkered board: a matching set.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Erik

Do you remember the night we first met? I think of it so often, even now. The way your voice captivated me. The proud, arrogant stance you took, opposing my king, my country, and all I stood for. I had spent so much of my journey to Ninji-Novogorod hating the magician who tore me away from my home and my son, that I never expected to find you as compelling as I did. Until you spoke to me, you were an assignment, a bother, a fool’s errand. But you spoke and I knew then that yours could be the voice that haunted me over a thousand lifetimes. I did not love you then, but you awoke something terrifying within my breast.

Potential.

The following night, I came to see you perform. Your hands, even more than your voice, fascinated me. They betrayed you. All your rage, longing, contempt coiled and unfurled with your hands. When your face was revealed, I knew I ought to have felt the same horror the rest of the crowd did, but instead, I was gripped by curiosity. You are a creature – a _man_ – of dichotomies. Yours is the face of the devil himself, but your voice would leave even the holiest angel trembling in awe at its majesty. You are an arrogant and demanding man, but I’ve never met one so self-loathing and self-denying as you. Your song took me to another place, another time, another love. And there it was again.

Potential.

I did not yet love you, but in your voice I heard so many things I could love. Such beauty, such exquisite longing, such sorrow. You made me weep. I have torn apart families in the name of the law, razed communities with royal, holy righteousness, and never shed a tear. But your voice wracked my body with sobs and I knew then that if I was not careful, you could make me yours with a single, secret word. I determined to close myself to you. To your amorality, to your gallows humor, to your siren song, and to those thin, graceful hands…

Looking back now, I know that I failed to close myself to you. If I had been successful, perhaps the potential futures you and I might have shared – histories, now, I suppose, as the years have ticked by steadily – would not haunt me so.

When I dream, I hear nothing but your voice. I see your hands, your eyes, your mask, the hollows of your cheekbones and the grimmest of smiles upon your lips. The love that we could have shared haunts me.

The love that we could still create gives me hope.

I love you now for all the potential lives we could lead, side by side, but in your eyes I see only the stirrings of potential. You do not speak of love. The word lingers at the corner of your lips, unspoken. And I will wait until that potential blossoms for you into the same, all-consuming love I feel. You have taught me nothing, if not patience. Perhaps you will one day realize that I am not only the person you are spending the rest of your days with, but the one you want to spend eternity with. It’s taken me years to love you and I will wait.

I will be ready whenever you are.

**Author's Note:**

> Koi no yokan is an untranslatable Japanese phrase that means ‘premonition of love’. It is the sense one can get upon first meeting another person that the two of them are going to falling love. This differs from the idea ‘love at first sight’ in that it does not imply that the feeling of love exists, rather refers to the knowledge that a future love is possible.


End file.
